Crime and Punishment Quotes (2025)

A number of quotes in “Crime and Punishment” capture most succinctly the motivations, passions, and emotions of the characters in the book. These quotes are profound not only insofar as they help remind us of key moments or illuminate important plot points, but also because they contain great value outside their immediate context.

Raskolnikov said these words just after reading the letter from his mother with the information that Dunya was about to get married to Luzhin. From the details his mother provided in the letter, Raskolnikov deduced immediately that Luzhin was a bad character and that Dunya was only marrying him, so she could be better able to support Raskolnikov. The idea of Dunya sacrificing herself to an untenable marriage was too much for Raskolnikov to bear. Not long ago, he had seen and had been irritated by Sonya’s sacrifice in the form of her prostitution for the sake of the Marmeladovs.

Here Raskolnikov provides the cold rationale that allowed him to kill the old pawnbroker. He has assumed the role of God and has decided whose life is worth anything, and what the “common good” should be. By virtue of her greed, exploitation, and cruelty, the old woman’s life has been deemed worthless and fair game in exchange for the common good.

Here the fatalistic destiny of Raskolnikov’s ideological grounding displays itself. The murder does not agree with Raskolnikov’s conscience, rooted in his orthodox Christian upbringing. But the ideologies he has learned, and his own naked striving for power, exacerbated by his poverty, hopelessness, and powerlessness, all conspire to effect a parasitic-like hold on him that pushes him, against all opposition from his conscience, towards murder and robbery. He is on an autopilot he cannot easily disentangle from.

Raskolnikov’s mother uttered this statement to him. Although she retains great faith in his talents, capacity, and potential to be great, Pulcharia cannot help being worried by the dangerous ideas her son holds. She is disheartened by his godlessness.

This feeling is no doubt the result of the workings of a dangerous idea in his head – the idea that he needs to murder an evil person for the benefit of mankind to prove that he was extraordinary, like Napoleon. This idea had consumed him and has now risen to the surface in the face of a new opportunity to completely override his conscience and reorient him towards carrying out the murder.

Raskolnikov utters this statement to Sonia in his efforts to mark her out as a fellow outcast. For Raskolnikov, Sonia’s prostitution is akin to his own crime of murder, the only difference being that while Raskolnikov had taken the life of another, Sonia has tainted hers by selling her body.

This is Sonia’s wise and humble response to Raskolnikov’s attempt to make her choose whose life was more valuable between Luzhin who had just tried to frame her for something she did not do, and her suffering mother and children. Ordinarily, the question is tempting, as one might expect Sonia to easily choose Luzhin’s death if it could in some ways alleviate the suffering of Katerina and the children who were otherwise facing a bleak future. But Sonia is humble and pure enough to know that she cannot accord herself the authority to determine who should live or die. That is a judgment God alone could make.

During his meeting with Sonia after the episode with Luzhin at the memorial of Marmeladov, Raskolnikov tries to justify his crime on noble, altruistic and utilitarian grounds. But those motivations prove to rest on shaky foundations and in the end, Raskolnikov realized the major reason he killed was that he wants to test his own theory; of whether he belonged with the elite superior humans who had transcended morality or whether he was in fact only a louse, a member of the mass of men condemned to a life of moral and intellectual mediocrity.

Here Raskolnikov admits to himself that he was not superior at all. He was not on the same level as Napoleon according to his own theory. He was a weak man, a mediocre man, essentially a louse.

After confessing to Sonia, the pure-hearted prostitute seem to have only one piece of advice for him; to go straight and confess and accept his punishment. She had seen and was overwhelmed by the intensity of his suffering and was desperate for him to find relief and redemption. But she knows he can only get these through genuine, public repentance and penance through suffering.